THE NEW YORK TIMES

A Company Copes With Backlash Against the Raise That Roared

Love Letters to the Gravity Boss

Dan Price, chief of Gravity Payments,
raised the annual salary floor for his employees to $70,000. Most
responses were positive, but Mr. Price says that even the negative
letters were valuable.

By ERICA BERENSTEIN and JESSEY DEARING on Publish Date July 31, 2015.
Photo by Matthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times.
Watch in Times Video »

There
are times when Dan Price feels as if he stumbled into the middle of the
street with a flag and found himself at the head of a parade.

Three months ago, Mr. Price, 31, announced he was setting a new minimum salary of $70,000 at his Seattle credit card processing firm, Gravity Payments,
and slashing his own million-dollar pay package to do it. He wasn’t
thinking about the current political clamor over low wages or the
growing gap between rich and poor, he said. He was just thinking of the
120 people who worked for him and, let’s be honest, a bit of free
publicity. The idea struck him when a friend shared her worries about
paying both her rent and student loans on a $40,000 salary. He realized a
lot of his own employees earned that or less.

Yet
almost overnight, a decision by one small-business man in the
northwestern corner of the country became a swashbuckling blow against
income inequality.

The
move drew attention from around the world — including from some
outspoken skeptics and conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, who smelled a
socialist agenda — but most were enthusiastic. Talk show hosts lined up
to interview Mr. Price. Job seekers by the thousands sent in résumés. He
was called a “thought leader.” Harvard business professors flew out to
conduct a case study. Third graders wrote him thank-you notes. Single
women wanted to date him.

Photo

About 70 percent of the
businesses that occupy the Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle use
Gravity to process their credit card payments.Credit
Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

What
few outsiders realized, however, was how much turmoil all the hoopla
was causing at the company itself. To begin with, Gravity was simply
unprepared for the onslaught of emails, Facebook posts and phone calls.
The attention was thrilling, but it was also exhausting and distracting.
And with so many eyes focused on the firm, some hoping to witness
failure, the pressure has been intense.

More
troubling, a few customers, dismayed by what they viewed as a political
statement, withdrew their business. Others, anticipating a fee increase
— despite repeated assurances to the contrary — also left. While dozens
of new clients, inspired by Mr. Price’s announcement, were signing up,
those accounts will not start paying off for at least another year. To
handle the flood, he has already had to hire a dozen additional
employees — now at a significantly higher cost — and is struggling to
figure out whether more are needed without knowing for certain how long
the bonanza will last.

Two
of Mr. Price’s most valued employees quit, spurred in part by their
view that it was unfair to double the pay of some new hires while the
longest-serving staff members got small or no raises. Some friends and
associates in Seattle’s close-knit entrepreneurial network were also
piqued that Mr. Price’s action made them look stingy in front of their
own employees.

Then
potentially the worst blow of all: Less than two weeks after the
announcement, Mr. Price’s older brother and Gravity co-founder, Lucas
Price, citing longstanding differences, filed a lawsuit
that potentially threatened the company’s very existence. With legal
bills quickly mounting and most of his own paycheck and last year’s $2.2
million in profits plowed into the salary increases, Dan Price said,
“We don’t have a margin of error to pay those legal fees.”

As
Mr. Price spoke in the Gravity conference room, he could see a handful
of employees setting up beach chairs in the parking lot for an impromptu
meeting. The office is in Ballard, a fast-gentrifying neighborhood of
Seattle that reflects the wealth gap that Mr. Price says he wants to
address. Downstairs is a yoga studio, and across the street is a coffee
bar where customers can sip velvet soy lattes on Adirondack-style
chairs. But around the corner, beneath the elevated roadway, a homeless
woman silently appeals to drivers stopped at the red light with a
cardboard sign: “Plz Help.”

In his own way, Mr. Price is trying to respond to that request.

“Income
inequality has been racing in the wrong direction,” he said. “I want to
fight for the idea that if someone is intelligent, hard-working and
does a good job, then they are entitled to live a middle-class
lifestyle.”

The
reaction to his salary pledge has led him to think that if his business
continues to prosper, his actions could have far-reaching consequences.
“The cause has expanded,” he said. “Whether I like it or not, the
stakes are higher.”

On
a recent weekday evening, Mr. Price confidently threaded his way
through clumps of tourists and past the rows of flowers and fruits that
line Pike Place Market
in downtown Seattle. About 70 percent of the businesses that occupy
this nearly century-old marketplace use Gravity to process their credit
card payments, Mr. Price said. He started courting customers there more
than 11 years ago, while still attending Seattle Pacific University, a
small Christian college. He would go from stall to stall, shaking hands,
scribbling down phone numbers. Early on, he signed up Pure Food Fish.
The shop was a backdrop in the film “Sleepless in Seattle,” but more
important, it was run by the 86-year-old Solly Amon, who inherited the
pocket store from his father and is lovingly known as the “cod father.”
When other merchants heard Mr. Amon trusted Dan, they did too.

“They
give us tremendous service,” Mr. Amon said. He remembered an incident
years ago when Mr. Price had a new credit card machine up and running
within three hours after his old one died.

In
addition to providing the devices and software that merchants use when a
customer whips out a credit card, Gravity makes sure the money shifts
securely and quickly among buyer, bank and business. In an industry
dominated by global banking giants and mammoth processors, the company
last year processed $6.5 billion in sales for 12,000 clients, most of
them small and medium-size businesses.

Was
Mr. Amon bothered by Mr. Price’s new payroll policy? “He takes care of
his business, and I’ll take care of my business,” he declared.

Brian Canlis, a co-owner of his family-named restaurant,
is also a client. He said he, too, supported Mr. Price’s move, but felt
challenged by it. Mr. Canlis is already worried about how to deal with
Seattle’s new minimum wage, which rose to $11 an hour in April and is scheduled to reach $15 an hour for small businesses within five years.

The pay raise at Gravity, Mr. Canlis told Mr. Price, “makes it harder for the rest of us.”

Mr.
Price winced. “It pains me to hear Brian Canlis say that,” he said
later. “The last thing I would ever want to do is make a client feel
uncomfortable.”

But
any plan that has the potential, as Mr. Price has put it, to “set the
world on fire,” is bound to make some people squirm. Leah Brajcich, who
oversees sales at Gravity, fielded complaints from several customers who
accused her boss of communist or socialist sympathies that would drive
up their own employees’ wages and others who felt it was a public
relations stunt. A few were worried that fees would rise or service
would fall off. “What’s their incentive to hustle if you pay them so
much?” Ms. Brajcich said they asked. Putting in 80-hour weeks after the
announcement, she called the mistrustful clients, stopping by their
offices or stores, and invited them to visit Gravity to see for
themselves the employees’ dedication. She said she eventually lured most
back.

As
for other business leaders in Mr. Price’s social circle, they were
split on whether he was a brilliant strategist or simply nuts. As much
as they respected him, they were also disturbed. “I worry how that’s
going to impact other businesses,” said Steve Duffield, the chief executive of the DACO Corporation, who met Mr. Price through the Entrepreneurs’ Organization
in Seattle. “We can’t afford to do that. For most businesses, employees
are the biggest expense and they need to manage those costs in order to
survive.”

Roger
Reynolds, a co-owner of a wealth management company, said his
discussion of the pay plan with Mr. Price got heated. “My wife and I got
so frustrated with him at a cocktail party, we literally left,” said
Mr. Reynolds, who complained that Mr. Price unfairly accused him of
measuring his self-worth solely in terms of money and trying to hold
somebody else down. Everyone may have equal rights, but not equal talent
or motivation, Mr. Reynolds said. “I think he’s trying to bring in some
political and aspirational beliefs into the compensation structure of
the workplace.”

Photo

Dan Price, the chief executive of Gravity Payments, estimated his current net worth at about $3 million.Credit
Matthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times

If
there was a 19th-century thinker Mr. Price drew inspiration from, it
would be not Karl Marx but Russell Conwell, the Baptist minister and
Temple University founder, whose famed “Acres of Diamonds”
speech fused Christianity and capitalism. “To make money honestly is to
preach the Gospel,” Mr. Conwell exhorted his listeners. To get rich “is
our Christian and godly duty.”

Growing up in rural southwestern Idaho, Mr. Price frequently listened to a recording of the speech on tape.

Every
day he and his four brothers and one sister rose as early as 5 a.m. to
recite a proverb, a psalm, a Gospel chapter and an excerpt from the Old
and New Testaments. Home-schooled until he was 12 and taught to accept
the Bible as the literal truth, Mr. Price also listened to the Rush
Limbaugh show for three hours a day — never imagining he would one day
be the subject of a rant by the host. Then it was time to help his
mother with organic gardening, composting and recycling.

Like
his siblings, Dan was fiercely competitive, said his father, Ron Price,
and hard on himself if he didn’t come in first at Bible memorization
contests, backyard football or board games like Life and Monopoly. “Dan
has always been a deal maker,” said his father, who is now a management
consultant.

The
isolation did not prepare Mr. Price for the complex social interactions
of junior high school. He was awkward, out of place. He remembered
joining in when a group of children started laughing, only to later
realize that he had been the target of their ridicule.

His
experiences did reinforce an independent, contrarian streak even as he
made a place for himself in the teenagers’ terrain. He formed a rock
band and got a girlfriend. After their first hug at 17, her conservative
Christian father demanded to know his intentions. The two were engaged,
and they married four years later. (They divorced amicably in 2011.)

His
parents instilled a sense of purpose. “We had a family mission” to
glorify God, he said. The household was run as a “family business” with
jobs and responsibilities carefully set out in charts and diagrams. “All
my siblings hated it, but I thought it was cool,” Mr. Price said with a
laugh.

Mr.
Price is no longer so religious, but the values and faith he grew up on
are “in my DNA,” he said. “It’s just something that’s part of me.”

He
transferred that zeal to his credit card processing business, which he
started out of his dorm room in 2004 with his brother Lucas, five years
his senior.

He
preached Main Street capitalism that promised to deliver good value,
low prices and individual service. His success won him a shelf full of
local business awards and even a chance to meet President Obama during National Small Business Week
when he was just 25. Though he now has the shoulder-length hair and
beard of a hipster, back then he looked like a baby-faced Donny Osmond
and sounded like Alex P. Keaton, the eager beaver Republican played by
Michael J. Fox on the 1980s sitcom “Family Ties.” He did not actively
oppose Seattle’s minimum-wage increase, but a reason he urges other
business owners to follow his lead on pay is to avoid more government
regulation.

Mr.
Price’s drive to succeed, fierce commitment to help small businesses
and exacting standards attracted other business-minded idealists. Some
even took pay cuts to work at Gravity. Keeping an existing client is
more important than getting a new one, he decreed. Never make a caller
hear more than two rings before picking up.

Nydelis
Ortiz, 25, a former Peace Corps volunteer in Peru (not to mention the
2010 Miss Vermont), said she was drawn to his passion and community
volunteer projects. Emery Wager, 30, a Stanford engineering graduate and
a former Marine, decided to forgo applying to Harvard Business School
so he could work closely with Mr. Price. (He felt vindicated when a
Harvard friend who had ridiculed his decision told him Gravity’s pay
scale was discussed in class.)

Maisey
McMaster was also one of the believers. Now 26, she joined the company
five years ago and worked her way up to financial manager, putting in
long hours that left little time for her husband and extended family.
“There’s a special culture,” where people “work hard and play hard,” she
said. “I love everyone there.”

She
helped calculate whether the firm could afford to gradually raise
everyone’s salary to $70,000 over a three-year period, and was initially
swept up in the excitement. But the more she thought about it, the more
the details gnawed at her.

“He
gave raises to people who have the least skills and are the least
equipped to do the job, and the ones who were taking on the most didn’t
get much of a bump,” she said. To her, a fairer proposal would have been
to give smaller increases with the opportunity to earn a future raise
with more experience.

A couple of days after the announcement, she decided to talk to Mr. Price.

“He
treated me as if I was being selfish and only thinking about myself,”
she said. “That really hurt me. I was talking about not only me, but
about everyone in my position.”

Already approaching burnout from the relentless pace, she decided to quit.

Photo

Maisey McMaster, a former financial planner at Gravity Payments, quit after the salary announcement.Credit
Matthew Ryan Williams for The New York Times

Yesterday in New York City Rick Perry outlined his plan to end ‘Too Big To Fail’. http://vlt.tc/2146 Perry’s remarks mirror concerns expressed by the left, but were carefully crafted in terms of the endorsed solutions. http://vlt.tc/214l
These weren’t the cheap clichés of last go-round about stringing up Ben
Bernanke – it marks a serious grappling with the many difficult issues
still left unresolved or unsteady after five years under Dodd-Frank.
Perry even praised the Fed’s efforts to require higher capital levels
for the biggest banks and suggested building on those efforts. Thus far,
this is the most significant statement we’ve seen from any Republican
candidate regarding the key issue of future bailouts and what changes
need to happen to prevent TBTF from continuing as our national policy.
It’s the sort of thing you want from a presidential candidate.

Unfortunately for Perry, that conversation may have to be relegated to
the lower-level debate next week on Fox News, given their arbitrary
decision to cap the debate field at 10 and rely on national polling.
Thank John Kasich and the folks at Quinnipiac. http://vlt.tc/214k Here’s Politico’s analysis. http://vlt.tc/214m
“Kasich, at 5 percent, is tied for eighth place with ... Cruz. That's
enough to vault Kasich into the top 10 in POLITICO's analysis of [the
polling that will determine the 10 prime-time slots] at the Fox News
debate on Aug. 6.
Kasich replaces former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who earned just 2 percent
of the vote in the Quinnipiac poll and slipped to 11th in the POLITICO
average. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie stays at ninth in the average
thanks to his 3-percent haul... Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, who earned 2
percent in the Quinnipiac poll, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick
Santorum, at 1 percent, are tied for 12th place in the POLITICO average —
a full percentage point behind Kasich for the 10th-place spot.”

As for Donald Trump: “Fully 20 percent of Republican and
Republican-leaning voters said they would vote for Trump if the primary
were held today — the largest share any single candidate has received in
Quinnipiac’s seven surveys over the past two years. That puts the brash
real-estate magnate ahead of the two other candidates who earn
double-digit support: Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker at 13 percent and
former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 10 percent.”

What is frustrating about this situation is that at the moment, the sort
of serious policy conversation that ought to take place in the context
of the Republican 2016 context – a grappling with the lessons of the
past, and with the right approach to policy in the future – requires
people who have actually put some thought into what they would do as
president. Something beyond “Repeal and replace Obamacare with something
terrific.” http://vlt.tc/214o
But that conversation isn’t going to happen so long as blowhards who
speak to people’s frustrations – but not their actual policy priorities –
control the debate. The longer this stage of the contest continues, the
less time there is for a real debate about the future of the party and
the nation.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

..
Campus
officials across the nation have labeled the phrase “America is the
land of opportunity” offensive, but the madness does not stop
there. Even the word “American” is a problem to some campus officials
now.
.
A “Bias-Free Language Guide” posted by the University of New Hampshire declares the word American “problematic.”
.
“North Americans often use ‘American’ which usually, depending on the
context, fails to recognize South America,” the guide states. “American
assumes the U.S. is the only country inside these two continents.”
.
The guide recommends terms such as “U.S. citizen,” “resident of the U.S.” and “North American or South American” as “preferred.
.”
Many other innocuous words are also listed on the guide as “problematic,” notes Campus Reform, which first reported on the guide.
.
Here’s some additional highlights:
.

“We offer this guide as a way to promote discussion and to facilitate
creative and accurate expression,” campus officials state. “An integral
part of UNH’s mission is to continue to build an inclusive learning
community, and the first step toward our goal is an awareness of any
bias in our daily language.”
.
The University of New Hampshire is among many universities warning faculty and students to be careful of the words they use.
.
“America is the land of opportunity,” “There is only one race, the
human race” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job”
are among a long list of alleged microaggressions faculty leaders of
the University of California system have been advised not to say.
.
The University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point officials have advised faculty that the term “America is a melting pot” is a racial microaggression.
.
.
And faculty at the University of Missouri-Columbia have been advised to correct peers’ noninclusive language, or politically incorrect terminology.
.

Canada’s top 10 list of America’s Stupidity

This is so sad; The U.S. has moved from a proud, strong country to a laughing stock of the world…
.
Canadian’s Version of David Letterman’s Top 10. Just makes you want
to shake your head in disbelief, and, just maybe choke someone in
charge…
.
Of course we look like idiots we are…
.
# 10 Only in America… could politicians talk about the greed of the
rich at a $35,000.00 per plate Obama campaign fund-raising event.
.
# 09 Only in America… could people claim that the government still
discriminates against black Americans when they have a black President, a
black Attorney General and roughly 20% of the federal workforce is
black while only 14% of the population is black, 40+% of all federal
entitlements goes to black Americans – 3X the rate that go to whites, 5X
the rate that go to Hispanics!
.
# 08 Only in America… could they have had the two people most
responsible for our tax code, Timothy Geithner (the head of the Treasury
Department) and Charles Rangel (who once ran the Ways and Means
Committee), BOTH turn out to be tax cheats who are in favor of higher
taxes.
.
# 07 Only in America… can they have terrorists kill people in the
name of Allah and have the media primarily react by fretting that
Muslims might be harmed by the backlash.
.
# 06 Only in America… would they make people who want to legally
become American citizens wait for years in their home countries and pay
tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege, while they discuss
letting anyone who sneaks into the country illegally just ‘magically’
become American citizens. (probably should be number one).
.
# 05 Only in America… could the people who believe in balancing the
budget and sticking by the country’s Constitution be called EXTREMISTS.
.
# 04 Only in America… could you need to present a driver’s license to
cash a check or buy alcohol, or board a commercial aircraft, but not to
vote.
.
# 03 Only in America… could people demand the government investigate
whether oil companies are gouging the public because the price of gas
went up when the return on equity invested in a major U.S. Oil company
(Marathon Oil) is less than half of a company making tennis shoes
(Nike).
.
# 02 Only in America… could you collect more tax dollars from the
people than any nation in recorded history, still spend a Trillion
dollars more than it has per year – for total spending of $7 Million PER
MINUTE, and complain that it doesn’t have nearly enough money.
.
# 01 Only in America…. could the rich people – who pay 86% of all
income taxes – be accused of not paying their “fair share” by people who
don’t pay any income taxes at all.

Read more at http://conservativebyte.com/2015/07/canadas-top-10-list-of-americas-stupidity/

Monday, July 27, 2015

By Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz al-SaudJuly 16, 2015
Serious pundits in the media and in politics say that President Barack
Obama’s Iran deal is deja vu with President Bill Clinton’s North Korean
nuclear deal. I humbly disagree. President Clinton made his decision
based on strategic foreign policy analysis,
and top secret national intelligence information, and yes, his desire
for good intentions to save the people of North Korea from starvation
that was self-induced by its leadership. It turned out that the
strategic foreign policy analysis was wrong and there
was a major intelligence failure, that if President Clinton knew it
before he made his decision – I am absolutely confident he would not
have made that decision.
President Obama made his decision to go ahead with the Iran nuclear deal
fully aware that the strategic foreign policy analysis, the national
intelligence information, and America’s allies in the regions
intelligence all predict not only the same outcome of
the North Korean nuclear deal but worse – with the billions of dollars
that Iran will have access to. It will wreak havoc in the Middle East
which is already living in a disastrous environment, whereby Iran is a
major player in the destabilization of the
region.
Therefore, the question to be asked is: Why President Obama will go
ahead with such a deal, knowing what President Clinton didn’t know when
he made his deal with North Korea?
It is definitely not because President Obama is not smart enough,
because he is. I contend that the real reason is that President Obama is
honest and at peace with himself, because ideologically he believes what he is doing is right. Everything else,
that could be a disastrous result to his decision, I believe he thinks it is an acceptable collateral damage.
Who am I to make such a profound conclusion? Humbly, I am a man who
worked directly with U.S. presidents from Jimmy Carter to George W.
Bush, and I am humbly a man who served representing his country in the
great country of the United States of America for
23 years, and yes, I have spent 17 years of my life in my own country’s
military. If all of that doesn’t qualify me to make well-informed
comments on this situation, add to that the fact, that from 2005 until
2015, I served as national security adviser
to my leaders and chief of intelligence, which gave me access first
hand to my leaders’ dealing and analysis of President Obama.
For the sake of disclosure, I have to admit that I have never worked or
met personally with President Obama before or after he became president,
and the only information I base my assessment of the president on, is
what the late King Abdullah, my boss, informed
me of, or asked for my advice about when it came to handling issues
with President Obama. All of which was transferred back and forth
through our ambassador at the time and our foreign minister at the
moment, Mr. Adel Al-Jabeir.
I have limited my comments only to the Iranian nuclear deal, but trust me, the
president’s policy’s on the Middle East generally and Syria, Iraq and
Yemen particularly, are eye-openers and there may be another time to
discuss that. But definitely now,
I am convinced more than any other time that my good friend the magnificent old fox Henry Kissinger was correct when he said “America’s enemies should fear America, but America’s friends should fear America more.” People in my region now are relying
on God’s will, and consolidating their local capabilities and analysis with everybody else except our oldest and most powerful ally.
It breaks one’s heart to say that, but facts are stubborn things, and you cannot ignore them.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz al-Saud is the former ambassador
of Saudi Arabia to the United States of America (1981-2005)

Why does the Republican Party exist? What is its purpose as a political
entity – to what end do its members work to elect their fellow
Republicans? What are its priorities? Whose interests does it serve? Why
is this political party still around so long after its primary
motivations for creation – the defense of the Union and the end of
slavery – were achieved? The Democratic Party exists to serve its
clients – but the Republican Party’s justification is more ethereal. Is
it just an arbitrary entity seeking a universal negative, designed to
push back against Democratic policies and demand they be more something
(efficient) or less something else (expensive)? Or does it have actual
principles and priorities it seeks to make a reality?

The Republican Party’s voters and supporters certainly seem to have such
beliefs. But they rarely seem to make it through the process of
synthesis that turns such beliefs into actual policy priorities. Being a
negative force is not nothing, and blocking bad policy is worthwhile.
But when given the opportunity to put good policy into place, or to take
steps to make such policy more feasible in the future, where is the
Republican Party to be found?

David Harsanyi writes about this today in the context of explaining poll
after poll which shows the Republican Party less and less popular among
Republicans. http://vlt.tc/20x4
“It’s conceivable, and I’m just spitballing here, that many
conservatives are wondering: If the Republican Party is incapable or
unwilling to make a compelling case against the selling of baby organs
or the emergence of a nuclear Iran or the funding of a cronyist
state-run bank—or all three—then really, what exactly can it do? Setting
aside presidential politics for a moment, three issues have filled the
conservative ether the past few weeks: The administration’s pact
abetting Iran’s efforts to become a threshold nuclear power, Planned
Parenthood’s organ harvesting controversy, and, to a lesser extent, the
renewal of the Export-Import bank. None of these are hobbyhorses of the
wild fringe. These are issues—ostensibly, at least—that strike at the
heart of the modern GOP. And on all three, Republican leadership have,
though they held plenty of leverage to raise a stink, capitulated. In
fact, they have probably put more effort into evading confrontation than
their standard response of pretending to court it.”

Perhaps you believe the Republican Party exists as the party of limited
government and free markets. This is impossible after the past weekend,
where Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell went so far as to
blatantly make the lie he told his fellow Senators – that no deal had
been cut with interested Democrats during an earlier debate to reanimate
an entity of pure corporate welfare, the Export-Import Bank – a
priority so critical he would box out all other attempts to attach
amendments to what is considered a “must-pass” measure, the Highway
Bill.

Perhaps you believe the Republican Party exists as a national security
party, which believes in a clear-eyed trust but verify approach to
dealing with our enemies. This is impossible after the past few months,
where the Senate Republicans completely ceded their Constitutional duty
regarding the Iran deal, putting them in the wonderful position (so
politically advantageous in the realm of domestic policy) of decrying
this deal as awful without being on the hook for anything that happens
because of it.

Perhaps you believe the Republican Party exists as today the lone
pro-life party in the United States. This cannot be possible after the
weekend, where Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell blocked any
attempt to force President Obama and all his fellow Senate Democrats to
take a stand for or against not even the legality, but the taxpayer
subsidization of harvesting organs from aborted babies. The fact that
McConnell did all this after telling his GOP colleagues that he
definitely wouldn’t, and the fact that Texas Senator Ted Cruz pointed
this out, is a breach of decorum. http://vlt.tc/20we Orrin Hatch will be along with a ruler shortly to rap your knuckles, you naughty boy.

Taken together, the stance of the Senate Republican caucus on these
three issues reveal the utter failure of post-Cold War fusionism. The
Senate Republicans have in the space of a few short months dramatically
undercut their ability to be considered serious on national security,
fiscal conservative, and social conservative priorities. And for what?
What is worth cutting all three flimsy legs of the stool shorter? Surely
it has to be something worthwhile – avoiding a government shutdown, or
repealing Obamacare? Surely it must be about achieving some greater
legislative goal or laying the groundwork for taking the White House in
2016?

Well, actually, the aim is to pass a Highway Bill. It is a thousand page
tax and pork-laden monstrosity which does not deserve to pass in the
first place, and whose failure would be greeted as a positive
development for any fiscal conservative. http://vlt.tc/20x5
For conservatives, the Highway Bill is a bad thing that could be the
vehicle for something politically useful. For Republicans, this is not
the case. The passage of a Planned Parenthood defunding amendment would
set up a direct conflict with the White House over the issue, and
undercut McConnell’s priority of passing a Highway Bill with an Ex-Im
resurrection attached to it – two things that are not a priority at all
for Republican voters, mind you, but for the corporatist constituency
the Republican Party actually serves, are near the top of the list.

In a 20-minute
long broadside on the Senate floor today, Sen. Ted Cruz called out
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for the way he has been handling his
duties as the Senate’s top Republican.
According to Cruz, McConnell had made assurances in a private meeting
with other Republican senators that there would be no deal to revive
the Export-Import Bank, only to go back on his word today.
Ted Cruz delivered his remarks just after McConnell lined up the votes needed to add a 3-year extension of the controversial export finance bank to a highway funding bill.
“I told my staff that the Majority Leader looked me in the eye, and
54 Republicans in the eye [when he told them there was no deal to revive
Ex-Im],” Cruz said. “I cannot believe he would tell a flat out lie.”
Cruz’s remarks were peppered with Biblical references. In the
beginning of his rant, Cruz compared McConnell’s lie to Peter’s repeated
denial of Christ.
“Like Saint Peter, he denied it three times,” Ted Cruz said. “What he
told the press over and over and over again was a simple lie. This
institution should not operate at the beck and call of lobbyists in
Washington.”

Here and there you can find the initial framing of President Obama’s
legacy, largely couched in terms of the Iran deal currently making its
way toward what looks like a limping passage through the Congress.
Here’s one such piece. http://vlt.tc/20m5
It outlines five different aspects of Obama’s legacy – the Iran deal,
Obamacare, resolution of the financial crisis, racial leadership, and a
complete lack of scandals while in office. Yes, that last one’s really
there.

The legacy of the Iran deal is a risky one, and it may not turn out to be one Obama wants. David Harsanyi: http://vlt.tc/20o2
“Perhaps the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic does not feel
compelled to indulge in American fairytale endings? Khamenei knows there
is almost no way sanctions will return, even if he cheats. He
understands his nation will be poised to have nuclear weapons in a
decade, at the latest. Few people, even advocates of the P5+1 deal,
argue we can stop the mullahs in the long run. Best-case scenario, as
Fred Kaplan contends in Slate, is that the Islamic regime will get bored
of hating us and join the community of nations.” So that’s a dubious
measure of his foreign policy legacy, particularly considering that it
is more likely any of the other more prominent aspects of his tenure –
the rise of ISIS, the China hack, the Snowden disaster, the failure to
close Gitmo, the increase of domestic terrorism, the mismanagement in
Afghanistan and Iraq, and the failure to contain Russian expansionism –
are tied to Obama historically.

The legacy of Obamacare is unsure as well. Still unpopular, still
unstable, still rising costs (Hillary Clinton says rising health care
costs are one of her top issues for her campaign), and the need for
further reforms even if the current system withstands the 2016 election
shows the measure has not turned out to be anything like what Obama
hoped. Instead of a popular, well-run, cost-limiting health care
solution, it has been a hybrid of clunky systems combined with a major
Medicaid expansion. It will be reformed by Democrats or replaced by
Republicans or some combination of both after the coming election.

The resolution of the financial crisis is not really a legacy item
either. Too big to fail has become enshrined as government policy. The
likelihood of future bailouts has not decreased. The housing market is
dominated by Fannie and Freddie and is once again going down a subprime
path that could lead to future risks. And Dodd-Frank’s effect has been
to protect the Bigs and crush smaller community banks. The attempts to
use stimulus to jumpstart the economy have only given us a mediocre
recovery, one that has not led to the kind of employment levels that
we’d like to see. And the regulatory effects of Obamacare’s requirements
as well as a host of other measures have served to make all too many
incomes stagnant. To the degree Obama entered a bad situation, he has
not made it much better, and in some ways he has increased potential
problems for future presidents.

The idea that Obama is a president bereft of scandal is so laughable
that it is not worth dealing with seriously (it will be amusing to see
how long Obama lickspittles keep this argument up – will it still be the
case if Lois Lerner is in jail?). So let’s turn to the other legacy
item – racial leadership. It is here where Obama’s election seems to be
the cited factor, because it is the only one that can be cited in
arguing such a case. Is it really true that America faces less racial
strife in 2015 than we did in 2008? It certainly doesn’t seem to be the
case. Just look at Netroots Nation, or the riots in Baltimore and
Ferguson, or any of the other clashes that are taking place every month
across the country, divided along racial lines. Rather than a president
who has led us into an era of racial harmony, it feels like the Obama
presidency has made racial clashes more politically toxic and injected
race into arenas where it has no relevance (Obamacare, for instance).

It’s certainly possible Obama’s defenders are correct. Perhaps Iran will
change its ways and join the community of nations, ISIS will go away, a
Middle East arms conflict won’t escalate, China will stop hacking,
Russia will stop snarfing up nations, and the OPM invasion will just
result in a few fake credit cards. Perhaps Obamacare will stabilize,
costs will go down, people will like it, and nothing major will need to
change about it. Perhaps Dodd Frank and Too big to fail and subprime
housing won’t be an issue as the recovery finally takes off. Perhaps
none of the IRS, HHS, State, Justice, Immigration, or White House
scandals will result in anything of note, and Obama’s executive orders
will all remain in force even after a new president arrives. And perhaps
America will give Obama the gift of turning his departure into a moment
of racial harmony and an end to this latest strife.

Perhaps these things will happen. Anything’s possible. But if they
don’t, Obama’s presidency will look very different indeed in the history
books, unrecognizable compared to the one his cheerleaders believe he
has led. And that in itself tells you something about our media.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

The Iran Deal’s Collapsing Rationale

Blowing up the Middle East in order to save it—that’s the logic at work.

Secretary of State John Kerry meets with Adel al-Jubeir, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister., at the State Department, July 16.
Photo:
Win McNamee/Getty Images

By

Bret Stephens

July 20, 2015 7:50 p.m. ET

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Iran deal is supposed to prevent a nuclear-arms race in the
Middle East. So what better way to get that ball of hopefulness rolling
than by arming our regional allies to the teeth?
.

“The U.S. is
specifically looking at ways to expedite arms transfers to Arab states
in the Persian Gulf and is accelerating plans for them to develop an
integrated regional ballistic missile defense capability,” the Journal’s
Carol Lee and Gordon Lubold reported Monday. The goal, they add, is to prevent the Saudis “from trying to match Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.
.

Let’s follow this logic. If the Iran deal is as fail-safe as President Obama
claims, why not prove it by giving the Saudis exactly the same nuclear
rights that Iran is now to enjoy? Why race to prevent an ally from
developing a capability we have just ceded to an enemy? What’s the point
of providing the Saudis with defense capabilities they presumably don’t
need?
.

A hypochondriac convinced he has cancer isn’t usually
offered a course of chemotherapy. What we have here is ObamaCare for
Arabia.
.

The deal is also supposed to preserve the options of a
future U.S. president in the event that Iran should go for a bomb. On
this point, the president is explicit. “If, in a worst-case scenario,
Iran violates the deal,” he said last week, “the same options that are
available to me today will be available to any U.S. president in the
future.”
.

Here the claim is false by the president’s own
admission. The promise of the deal is that it is supposed to give the
world at least a year’s notice that Iran is seeking a bomb. But once the
terms of the deal expire, so does the notice period. “At that point,”
Mr. Obama acknowledged to NPR’s Steve Inskeep, “the breakout times would have shrunk almost down to zero.” That’s not true today.
On
Thursday, Moscow confirmed that it will proceed with the sale to Iran
of its state-of-the-art S-300 surface-to-air missile system,
notwithstanding the deal’s supposed five-year arms embargo on Iran and
over no objections from the White House. The sale means that a future
president ordering airstrikes against Iran would do so against an
adversary that can shoot American planes out of the skies. That’s also
not true today.
.

What about “snap back sanctions”? This is the
make-believe mechanism whereby the slightest Iranian infraction will
swiftly be detected and countered by a majority vote of a special
multilateral committee that will instantly and forcefully reapply all
the sanctions that were previously lifted.
Because this is how
multilateral committees across the ages have always worked. Efficiently
and without regard to political or commercial considerations.
.

But
notice something else about the deal: Just as the U.S. can claim the
deal is being violated, so too can Iran. If the West gets sanctions snap
back, Tehran gets what Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of
Democracies calls “nuclear snap back.”
.

In practice, the threat
of the latter will inevitably prevent the application of the former.
Iranian violations of the deal, especially if they are technical and
incremental, will be tolerated for the sake of preserving the deal.
Violations will be treated as differences of interpretation as to what
the deal requires, or as arcane disputes over technical issues, or as
responses to some Western provocation. Pretexts will be contrived to
revise the deal to suit new and more expansive Iranian demands.
Editorialists will enjoin “all parties” to reason and restraint.
.

“When enough bureaucratic prestige has been invested in a policy,” Henry Kissinger once wrote, “it is easier to see it fail than to abandon it.” That’s the future of the Iran deal.
.

Meantime, Iran gets $150 billion in mostly upfront sanctions relief. Susan Rice
insists that “for the most part” the money will be spent on “the
Iranian people and their economy,” an insight the national security
adviser must have from the same people who briefed her on Benghazi and Bowe Bergdahl.
But she also admits that some of the money might be spent on Iran’s
“bad behavior in the region”—but that’s OK because the nuclear deal “was
not designed to prevent them from engaging in bad behavior.”
.

Let
it be entered into the record that the United States government has
agreed to release monies that it believes will be used to fund Iran’s
terrorist proxies. It has done so on the intriguing rationale that, in
order to prevent the Middle East from becoming a very dangerous place in
the future, it is necessary to allow it to become a very dangerous
place now. To adapt a phrase, the administration believes that it has to
destroy a region in order to save it.
.

Iran will get its money.
It will redouble its bad behavior. And sooner or later it will probably
get its bomb. The most Congress can do now is to lay a political
predicate for the next president to disavow the deal.
.

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About Me

A Texan who loves the truth and hates the lying, cheating, and deliberate prevarication that characterizes so much of our civic discourse these days.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
RIPOSTE, n. 1. Fencing: a quick thrust after parrying a lunge 2. a quick sharp return in speech or action; counterstroke.
- The Random House Dictionary of the English Language...........
You can contact me by sending an email to me at: leorugiens23@gmail.com